Out of the Ghetto: why detoxifying the left is the first step to revival

Cat Boyd and James Foley are activists in the International Socialist Group and have played leading roles in the Radical Independence Campaign. In this article, which is taken from the book ‘Time to Choose’ and published online for the first time here, they address the issues around reviving the left in Scotland.

A socialist strategy in Scotland must necessarily involve two parts. The first is a consideration of the objective possibility of and need for an anti-capitalist party in Scotland.[1] This is the question of “political space”: how much room do we have for an alternative at the ballot box when we are squeezed between SNP and Labour? The second is about our own behaviour, the trust we have for each other and our legitimacy with social movements and working class communities. This may be called the subjective factor.

Our position is that there is space for a radical Left alternative in Scotland. There is a crisis in Scottish society, lying somewhere between the nationalisation of RBS/HBOS (economic crisis) and the referendum of 2014 (constitutional crisis). This Scottish crisis presents definite opportunities. But to anticipate and shape this process, we must face up to our own need for reform. Due to the SSP split, the left in Scotland has a toxic reputation that extends far beyond our own ranks. We do not think our own crisis can be resolved by the final defeat or victory of any sector of the left. What is required is a three step detoxification process.

In the short term, we must fight for left unity. This is not just about united action with the Greens, trade unionists, and so on. It means active steps to restore working relations in the post-SSP left. In the medium term, we must regain the trust of protest movements and the wider radical left currents in society: we may call this left renewal. Lastly, there is the broad task, to win the leadership of society in the battle to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. This hegemonic task clearly requires winning over “reformist” voices in the SNP, Labour, and the unions. We call this left realignment. These steps, we wish to argue, depend on each other. But they stem from a reading of objective difficulties in maintaining existing Holyrood alliances.

Space for the Left?

Scottish politics is often thought of as a “village” in which “everyone who is anyone knows everyone else who matters”.[2] Few will deny that there are elites who shape the policy framework in Holyrood. But we also need to remember that Scotland is a capitalist, class society with staggering inequalities of wealth and power. One study, in 2003, showed that two Edinburgh districts have more millionaires than anywhere in Britain but Hampstead, London. “Blackhall is better heeled than Belgravia and Morningside is more upmarket than Mayfair,” reported The Telegraph.[3] Contrast this to the figure that men in the Calton ward of Glasgow live to an average age of 54. With these facts in mind, we dispute any idea that Scotland has a distinctively “collectivist” civil society. The neoliberal trajectory in Scotland, like elsewhere, has led to extreme polarisations of income.[4]

Reversing these trends is the goal of the anti-neoliberal left. The size of this group may be disputed. At the higher end of estimates, 43 percent of Scotland favours government action to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor.[5] In practice, this is unlikely to form part of the platform of either Scottish Labour or the SNP. But this should not lead to the conclusion that this group is liable to switch allegiances to the Left anytime soon. Winning this layer of Scotland to the left is the long-term goal. In the short term, we must seek to win back those who have deserted anti-capitalist politics in recent elections.

It is over-simplistic to attribute the decline of the radical Left in Holyrood to the SSP split alone. Clearly, there are objective socio-economic and political factors to account for. Some argue that the Left was always liable to get squeezed in the battle between the SNP and Scottish Labour, and thus view recent results as inevitable irrespective of contingent factors. Conveniently, this “objective” account draws attention away from our own flaws. There are certainly good reasons to look at objective circumstances. But the thesis is flawed in three respects.

Firstly, the fact that Scottish Labour is consistently positioned to the right of the SNP government puts the identity of trade union politics in question. Trade unions will not jump ship to SNP; such an arrangement would suit neither party. But their current link with Labour is not feasible so long as the neoliberal turn continues. The Left could, and should, play an active role in resolving Scotland’s crisis of working class representation.

Secondly, there is lasting evidence of anti-capitalist and left-of-Labour sentiment in Scotland. A decade ago, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) was able to command 130,000 votes and 6 MSPs. The Greens secured a similar vote, roughly 7 percent, with 7 MSPs. The Iraq factor played a strong role in this. But it is evidence that there is a significant part of the Scottish electorate that can be won to leftist ideas. Anti-war sentiment in Scotland did not emerge from nowhere. It built on frustration with the “village” atmosphere of Scottish politics, especially the failings of Scottish Labour to tackle poverty and class inequality. These frustrations have only intensified recently. While we may disagree on the actions of the SSP in Holyrood, we can surely agree that they had some success in tapping into this current of anger.

Thirdly, the last few years have seen a significant revival of the extra-parliamentary radical Left in Scotland. The student movement against fees and cuts was the precipitating factor. But this has helped to reinvigorate other currents as well, such as feminist, environmental, and international solidarity campaigns. Many of the people involved with these campaigns will strongly disagree with us on the need for political organisation. But we ignore them at our peril. Our belief is that they can play a strong role in revitalising the Left, but only if the existing Left is ready to change its own habits and routines. We have as much to learn from the movements as they have to learn from us.

A crisis of radical Left politics is not peculiar to Scotland. All across Europe, the victories of anti-capitalist forces after Seattle and during the Iraq war have been pushed back for a decade. The organised Left has failed to offer a coherent challenge, system-wide, to the crisis, the bailouts, and the cuts post-2008. But the defeats have not been even. In some nations, the Left has positioned itself well to present a challenge to the dominant austerity narrative. If Syriza in Greece is at one end of the spectrum of left-wing success, Britain has most definitely been at the other end.

For these reasons, we believe there is no reason for fatalism. We are a victim of contingent events, largely of our own making. By contrast, there is a much more protracted, structural crisis of Scottish politics. Qualitatively new forms are likely to emerge from this. We can help to shape this process, by putting poisonous recriminations aside, by participating in grassroots campaigns, and by leading the battle for a break with Britain in 2014.

The Perverse Glocalization of Labour

Scottish Labour is at the centre of the Scottish crisis. Accusations of “machine politics”, of “negative campaigning”, and of “tribalism” are common in all accounts of Scottish Labour. It was widely accepted that Labour had to learn from its Holyrood electoral hammering in 2011. Iain Gray, a “flop” as a leader, was replaced by Johann Lamont last December. Lamont conceded that Labour had an image problem, coming across as “a tired old politics machine which was more about itself than it was about them.” But this dour public face is symptomatic of deeper factors.

Adapting factional local politics and “patronage networks” to demands to “think global” is a particular challenge. Hardly a month goes by without new reports of a hornet’s nest of factional antagonisms and interest group politics in Labour, often, but not always, grouped in the West Coast of Scotland. Most recently, Labour’s chief Scottish spin doctor, Rami Okasha, was suspended amid allegations of “insubordination”. This exposed East-West coast divisions, and also divisions been the Holyrood and Westminster arms of politics.[6] These often express themselves as divisions within groupings, as the recent debacle over candidate selection for the Glasgow Council elections exposed.

At the same time, Scottish Labour is open for business when it comes to the amorphous benefits of “globalization”. It has proved far too intellectually timid to challenge Blairite norms. Gordon Brown summed up this new spirit: “The message London’s success sends out to the whole British economy is that we will succeed if like London we think globally…advance with light touch regulation, a competitive tax environment, and flexibility.”

A consensus held that London was a “model” to imitate for other urban economies. Glasgow City Council, in any case, had long been at the vanguard of neoliberal “urban boosterism” and place-marketing strategies.[7] Thus, when Jack McConnell implored Labour to act as “the party of enterprise” in 2004, he was merely stating conventional wisdom and long-established practice. It is telling that Scottish Labour has not produced critical figures like John McDonnell MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP. They would almost certainly find other political homes in Scotland, perhaps even in the SNP.

There has thus emerged a perverse “glocalization” effect in Scottish Labour. On the one hand, there is a far more ingrained policy consensus in Labour than in any other organisation. The “race to the bottom” in regulation and the virtues of competition were accepted with little resistance. The only qualification was the need to preserve the “cherished values”, lying somewhere between “Britishness” and “social democracy,” of the Labour movement. A very British and very “global” consensus thus prevails. The monetarists won the intellectual debate; but social democracy still has “the right values”. There is no dissent from this flimsy intellectual framework.

But imposing neoliberal demands in practice needs a party machine built on a tough local fabric of council housing, local council employment, and trade unions. Gerry Hassan and Eric Shaw refer to a (mythologised) “Labour Scotland” that services Scottish Labour in this regard.[8] These factors are still largely responsible for Labour’s core base of support in Scotland, despite decades of appeals to “professional” middle class voters through “modernization” policies. Trade unions, to take one key example, are still by far the biggest funders of Scottish Labour. The result is that loyalty to Labour is corrupting local representation with intellectual complacency and widespread factionalism. Although working class voters may be less inclined to vote Scottish Labour, the tissue of representation is still poisoned by its local feuds and its superstitious respect for “global market forces”.

The Lamont Moment

It might be argued that these factors culminated with the diabolical election performance of Iain Gray’s Labour in 2011. But we wish to extend this a step further. The apogee of Labour’s factional-intellectual crisis has arrived only this year, with Lamont’s attacks on universal benefits and Scotland’s supposed “something for nothing culture”.

Two factors have been identified here. The first is a lack of vision about Scottish taxation that Hassan calls “Block Grant conservatism”.[9] The result of thinking of Holyrood in terms of fixed fiscal parameters is to regard funding as a zero-sum game between “middle class benefits” and tackling poverty. Of course, there is no intellectual wriggle room in this straightjacket, since any leeway is likely to lead to further calls for “fiscal autonomy”, a slippery slope to independence.

A second issue is that Lamont is trying to massage internal disputes between roving bands of councillors, MPs, and MSPs.[10] The attack on “freebies” like free education and prescriptions may satisfy the need for daylight between the SNP and Labour in policy terms. But how will the public respond? The problem is that these “freebies” are inexpensive and highly popular.

The assumption that universal benefits are primarily a tax-break for the middle class, and a distraction from fighting poverty, is also highly dubious. Certainly, there is a problem of poverty in terms of direct material deprivation in Scotland. But often the deepest impact of poverty is the humiliation and stigma of it. Means-testing benefits, to save very meagre sums, will do what it always does: pile up bureaucracies and pile on humiliating poverty exams for the most vulnerable in society.

Even if Labour can successfully mount a defence of this policy, which seems unlikely, there is little prospect of any minor “cost savings” getting used to fight a war on poverty, in any sense of the word. Scottish Labour finds itself on the right of the Scottish government on almost every social issue, never mind Trident and war. At the same time, Labour’s roots and its funding base remains in the trade unions. This settlement is surely unstable and fundamental revisions in Scottish politics are possible.

The many hats of nationalism

While the Lamont factor has forced Labour further to the right, it has reigned in some of the more neoliberal tendencies in the Scottish government, at least temporarily. Education Secretary Mike Russell used a 2006 book to claim that Scotland should scrap universal benefits, as part of a sweeping set of cuts to the public sector. He was forced to retract these claims under pressure. “I am more than prepared to say today that my experience of the recession and the loss of 25,000 university places south of the border makes me believe I was wrong.” It would be foolish to read into this a change of heart from the SNP’s small, but influential, free market wing. What it represents is an attempt to unify the shifting imperatives between Scottish government, SNP party organisation, and the Yes Campaign for 2014. How these tensions play out will shape the future alignments of Scottish politics.

With a more or less fixed income from Holyrood’s block grant, Salmond’s team will be under pressure to make cuts as part of the Britain-wide austerity squeeze. There is no escaping this, all things being equal constitutionally. On the basis of its defence of the NHS, its opposition to tuition fees, and its defence of universalism, the SNP government has a legitimate claim to the identity of “real Labour” against New Labour. But this political manoeuvring does not change the social base of Salmond’s power amongst elements of the new middle class, small businesses, unorganised sections of the working class, and nouveau riche “entrepreneurs”. This clash between collectivist “values” and social structure was dramatised over the N30 strikes, in which SNP ministers happily crossed picket lines. The idea that N30 was an act of London-based “vested interests” with no relevance to Scotland was uncritically accepted in some sections of the Scottish broad Left.

Since the SNP membership is not, and cannot be, built out of trade unions, breaches like this are inevitable. However, this does not mean the SNP is a right-wing wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is a party built on the class faultlines of a nationalist platform. There is clearly a very genuine enthusiasm for anti-war and anti-nuclear politics in the SNP ranks. This has been qualified by a sad oversight on Afghanistan, where leaders have stuck to mainstream complacency. But this is a telling contrast with Labour, where any anti-war politics is a dirty secret.

The debate on NATO clearly reveals the fractures of trying to win the public to independence. On the one hand, Yes Scotland repeats the official line: let us not talk about the precise details of a future nation, let us unite for today and all issues can be democratically agreed after 2014. But all the while the media and “civil society” demands answers about “security” after independence. The British establishment is adept at manipulating the politics of fear, and Yes Scotland has no basis to tackle this. Thus, the SNP is buying time with the Left using Yes Scotland’s sterile optimism, while shifting its own positions to make ground to the right in practice. This has already led to a humiliating public spat with the Scottish Green leader Patrick Harvie. This wrangling has resolved itself, for the time being, but serious divisions remain over the function of Yes Scotland.

For the time being, the SNP is still clearly to the Left of Scottish Labour. Only the most dogmatic determinist would pretend otherwise. In a peculiar twist, the SNP got a majority of working class votes in 2011. It even managed to break Scotland’s Catholic community away: 43 percent voted SNP against 36 percent for Labour, testament to its break with a toxic perception of pro-Orange politics. But these factors cannot withstand the elements forever. Divisions have been held off for the time being. But after the 2014 referendum the SNP’s contradictions must start to unravel, or it will move back to the right of Labour under pressure from the pro-market wing of the party.

The Movements

No consideration of the future of the Left can leave aside the question of the extra-parliamentary movements. There are two aspects to consider in this respect: trade unions and protest groups. We would defend the decision to consider these forces separately. Sadly, the evidence of surveys has suggested that these rarely crossover.[11] While there are many honourable counter-examples, we feel these are two separate strands. It goes without saying that it is incumbent on trade union leaders, at the top and the bottom of organisations, to change this.

Trade union adaptation to devolved Scotland has been very uneven. The apparatus of the major, Labour-affiliated unions have been reluctant to acknowledge a Scottish dimension to politics. Many still deny that any substantial changes to the “united British working class” are worthy of consideration, or constitute anything more than a distraction. Labour tribalism is deep rooted in many unions. A huge proportion of trade union officials belong to Labour.[12] Attitudes to devolution have thus often fallen into the same complacent, business-as-usual mode.

However, the STUC has a somewhat different approach. They have a long record of campaigning for devolution, and to some degree have shown willingness to work engage with “Scottish civil society”. This has led, in practice, to a tendency towards “popular front” mobilisations, which are often accused of defining “broadness” by how many priests they can put on a platform. A more radical case is the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), which at one stage considered affiliation to the Scottish Socialist Party. The RMT actually affiliated to the SSP, before the split. Sadly these openings have been the exception, not the rule, and the Left has failed to capitalise on disenchantment with New Labour.

Not surprisingly, trade union officials have been awkward and stilted when responding to 2014. They have not given direct material support to Better Together, an openly reactionary coalition of interests which has been startlingly uncritical of the British status quo. An explicitly pro-British line would be difficult to maintain for the unions. Their core supporters are divided, and the most likely supporters of independence are the manual and routine working class.[13] Thus, the unions have instead played a peculiar game of brinksmanship, flirting with devolution max while claiming to “facilitate debate”. Anecdotally, it is often claimed that many trade union leaders actually support independence, and privately they will vote for it. Of course, they can never state this publically, for fear of breaches with London central offices. But many are keeping their options open in this fluid Scottish conjuncture.

By far the most inspiring recent challenges to Scottish neoliberalism have come from outside the organised Left. There is a broad, confused ecosystem of protest movements that has become a significant factor in its own right. The catalyst for this was a highly successful student-led movement against cuts and fees in Scottish universities. This took its momentum from England, but unlike the English movement it was ultimately successful in forcing the SNP into a dramatic policy u-turn prior to the election. The context of anti-cuts protests was undoubtedly a huge factor in Labour’s heavy defeat in 2011.

A significant consequence has been the radicalisation of a layer of young people against the violent arm of the Scottish state, as campaigns have been mounted to defend student protesters against victimisation. But the youth-led protests have reinvigorated other dormant leftist trends: Palestine solidarity, feminism, and anti-racism to name but a few. Perhaps the most inspiring example was the sight of young activists from Coalition of Resistance and the Hetherington Occupation joining with community campaigners to save the Accord Centre in East Glasgow. Meeting the organisational and intellectual needs of this sort of “movement from below” is precisely the reason for rethinking old habits on the Left.

What needs to happen on the Left

Ironically, both the trade union and the protest movement have reached a similar dead end after the concessions post-N30. It is at a time like this when an organised Left is most needed. Sadly, our authority has been badly tarnished by the aftershock of recent splits. Only a Panglossian optimist would claim that the post-SSP left in Scotland has clarified anything about socialist strategy or tactics. The split has generated a volcano of heat and precious little light. Electoral programs of post-SSP groups have been nearly identical. Any promise that the split would bring new opportunities for the Left to relate to political movements has surely been refuted in practice.

We believe that restoring the health of the Left in Scotland requires three points. Left unity, the restoration of working relationships in the post-SSP fragments, is a logical first step. It is very difficult to build trust in wider society when paranoia and suspicion is rife in our own ranks. Some will object that any future moves towards unity, however desirable, must be made Britain-wide. But this does not take full account of the territorial changes in British governance. The Holyrood system offers far greater opportunities for the Left to gain a purchase in parliament. This may not be the end goal of revolutionary politics. But it is surely desirable to have a permanent voice of opposition to cuts, war, racism, and sexism in public focus.

The referendum in 2014, whatever the result, is another reason for restoring working relations in Scotland without waiting for consent to break out in the rest of the UK. The last thing we want is to end up like Scottish Labour, belatedly forced into accepting the need for Scottish organisation after years of pummelling defeats. Left renewal needs to happen. It is our job to ensure that left dis-unity is not a roadblock to the organisational needs of the movement from below. At present, the organised left has a toxic reputation. Only unity can solve this.

The subjective factor, the modification of habits and “behaviour”, is thus highly important. Objective factors do count. But when opportunities open up to shape the debate, the Left’s intervention will be lacking if we put our own bad blood over the needs of the movement. Even if we profess good intentions, an “end to sectarianism”, etc, we must prove it in practice.

A last factor is that the wider, societal left, i.e. those concerned with fundamentally changing the pattern of wealth and power in society, is fragmented across various organisations. Many belong to no group. To win the respect of this group is contingent on left unity and left renewal. That is to say, trade unionists who wish to see a radical left-of-Labour force will not take us seriously until we have won the right to represent the needs of the movement.

In Holyrood, the centre cannot hold, and things as they stand are liable to fall apart. One way or another, this is the trajectory of the 2014 referendum. The SNP’s credibility as a moderate party of government will come to a head with its credibility as a force of constitutional change. Labour’s base of financial support from nurses, school teachers, and cleaners will conflict with the needs to make Westminster the hub of pro-market politics in Europe.

We are not claiming to offer a blueprint for the sort of party we need in the future. It is merely our intention to say that the patterns of the last five years do not have to recur forever as in Groundhog Day. We can choose to put an end to this. Another five years in the ghetto is unforgiveable. The renewed radical left current in Scotland is already emerging from below, and there is space for it to grow. Unity is about ensuring that the toxic waste of past splits does not poison the future.

7 thoughts on “Out of the Ghetto: why detoxifying the left is the first step to revival”

As a member of the SSP, I feel uncomfortable talking about a “post-SSP” political landscape. The Scottish Socialist Party is alive and kicking – it has no parliamentary representation for the time being, but it is certainly not a dead organisation. I agree with many of the general points of this piece, but the SSP still offers an opportunity and a structure for a meaningful return of socialists to the Scottish Parliament in 2016. I don’t think it should be written off. We certainly shouldn’t equate “post-Sheridan” with “post-SSP”.

Yeh Good stuff and worthy of a more fulsome response than the one I’m gonna give, late at night-off to ma scratcher.

What has happened to the SSP has certainly increased the level of toxicity for punters trying to operate on the ground. A lot are scarred by the events of the last few years and that makes me sad and angry- all that talent burnt out and broken. So on a emotional level as well as a political level what is to be done? How do you change a a political culture so that there is unity in diversity. How do you encourage and embrace identity politics whilst being aware of the class nature of society. If we are auld fucks, especially from the broken SSP should would depart the scene and stop crowding out the emergence of the to be newly born.

There a lot of good young people coming through but I don’t see many traditional working class kids from the schemes Am I wrong or are people involved in politics “bright young things” from the varsity and suchlike.

As I often used to quip to a pal of mines when I was in the SNP (many a year ago now) “when I see the SWP- I shall take my chance with capitalism”. Surely that party has done more harm than any other in building up a culture of mistrust. The SNP, may have left wingers in there but there is no organised group within that party since the early Nineties.

What we are currently seeing in the Anti-Bedroom Tax campaign is the return off party front politics, which has has been rife in British Left politics since I was a lad.

The SNP are to the left of Scottish Labour. mmm. Perhaps. This week maybe but after independence? It is the biggest show in town but it is populist to it’s very core has no coherent ideology.

You definitely have an issue with the SSP don’t you. The party is very much alive, active and growing. Repeatedly saying, ‘Post-Sheridan’, would get closer to the issue, but that would raise issues a bit closer to home for many ‘comrades’. A good and important start for many on the left would be to acknowledge they where wrong in leaving the SSP to side with Sheridan, wrong to put Sheridan before the people of Scotland (and the World for that matter) who more than ever need Socialist ideas and challenges heard in Parliament.

The mainstream press (in scotland) is well on the way to public delegitimization, as the guardian complained yesterday – an incredible opportunity for radical voices to be heard. re split : according to wikipedia SSP split was related to claims of infidelity and sexually related perjury (are you joking?!) with successful divide and rule by murdoch. can’t everyone let it go? i don’t think unity will be furthered by talking down sheridan. he is a fantastic speaker in the old school style and those skills are needed. Yes has promised people defence against neo liberalism and they will support those who will deliver. As labour is an electoral shell maybe so can the old unions be if members leave labour affiliated unions & start up new unions in which they actually have a voice. could be one union does it and others follow. forgive,negotiate,lead.

Cat Boyd and James Foley are to be congratulated for taking the correct first steps in assessing the impact of the “left” in Scotland. But they seem to go as far the brink, see how enormous the issues really are, then hesitantly step back. In the bizarre world of self-delusion that many on the left inhabit, nonetheless, they are moving in the correct direction.

The Scottish left does not just have a “toxic reputation” to outsiders. Its political and internal conduct over a number of decades has been poisonous and absurdly self-destructive. The now finished personality cult around Tommy Sheridan has been only the last example of the Scottish left’s desperate fantasy of seeking saviours. The conduct of one man is less interesting than the culture that sustained and supported him. Until that habit is removed, the left will always fail. Creating a movement that tries to establish an independent working class identity will always need prominent individuals, but they must always communicate the importance of that independence as distinct from the other more powerful social forces of alien classes. Building a movement that thinks and acts is more important that creating a new personality cult.

The result of several decades where there has been lack of an independent socialist political identity, has created various types of cults where abusive personal and political practices as seen as normal. And, as a result, no effort is made to create of the most suitable organisational structures to achieve those goals. This has so internally damaged the left’s thinking that any attempt at meaningful socialist unity is likely to re-produce the same mistakes.

Both writers seem to believe that socialist unity by itself will put enough people in the same organisation to address these problems. Past experience suggests that organisation without prior, clear purpose will fail. Indeed hasn’t organisational unity been the central feature for both the Labour Party and the Scottish Socialist Party? Before making calls for unity, it will be essential to identify around what overall political perspective and goals any meaningful unity should be sought. Otherwise internal divergences will eventually become unmanageable. Also the long tragic legacy of abusive personal, structural and political practices must be identified, challenged and substantially overcome before any forward progress can even be contemplated.

Three tasks are necessary for this to occur.

1. Defining a Clear Socialist Political Purpose. Most of the problems of the Scottish left can trace their origins to this lack of clarity. Detoxification requires that the goals and purpose of the Socialist left need to be established. Otherwise, any “united” organisation will quickly fragment into lots of different interest groups pulling in many different directions. Recently, there has a culture that seems to believe this is an expression of diversity. However, a diversity that permits outsiders to believe different goals are being pursued is an essentially dishonest and fraudulent approach to politics. A Push-Me-Pull-You left has no chance of ever being taking credibly by a wider audience no matter how internally tolerant it is.

One important question will have to be addressed. What is the point of the socialist left? The answer to this question will shape the outcome of every other question. Does the socialist left exist to drive the systemic transformation from Capitalism to Communism or does it exist solely to articulate popular concerns, especially discontent, so that an unrepresented constituency is not ignored? Even if it is acknowledged that it can do both, one will always drive the other. The point is to recognise which.

If there is one feature that constantly baffles many on the left, it is the amazing disconnection between the declared goals of an organisation and the tactics used to achieve them through addressing immediate concerns. Immediate and pressing concerns quickly seem to take over organisations until the purpose of an organisation appears to cease to exist. Even worse, external pressures such as anti-cuts campaigns, responses to industrial disputes etc., etc., produce a constant reaction to external events that removes any drive to seize the political initiative. As reactiveness dominates, initiative and purpose decline. When an organisation does not grasp the political initiative; it is usually grasped by others.

Making decisions is the hardest thing to do, especially for many on the left. The easiest thing to do is to make no decision and just let people do their own thing. Of course, if this masks itself as “tolerance”; how can it be opposed? However, when the political reason to exist disappears, choices of tactics become unnecessary and very soon the only cement holding people together is an organisational unity in which careerism, factionalism, opportunism and personality cults can fester. A culture of empowerment is replaced by a purposeless culture of conformity.

2. Establishing a Culture of Personal and Political Honesty and Integrity. Politics is not a touchy-feely activity and, by its nature, is always confrontational and adversarial. This recognises that abusive behaviours will always exist, therefore it is essential to create a culture and organisational structure where they are always confronted and challenged. But behaviours that breach most ordinary conventional ethical and moral must not be allowed to take root and character building should be central to the way political practices are carried out.

Over the last two decades, a large number of personal and political practices have crept into existence that have been accepted as normal and correct. Sometimes this has arisen because of the print and TV media’s desire to “personalise” issues and create celebrities who can produce instant quotes on demand. This has downgraded the importance of organisational requirements that can link an organisation’s views to a wider base of support. Contrived stunts have elbowed out actions when a mass concerns are expressed. Personal and organisational dishonesty has often filled the vacuum with large groups of people seeing nothing wrong in using front organisations as recruiting pools, false petitions being used as contact lists, and intentionally misleading others so that a hidden agenda can be achieved. A previous generation were told that “the end justified the means” nowadays abusive practices are carried out without a self-justifying catch phrase.

At the level of individual conduct, no strategy of detoxifying the Scottish left can ignore the need to examine how individual personal conduct is formed. It is necessary to establish structures where the tolerance of dishonesty and unethical behaviour are removed. Too often, this has been ignored and treated as a harmless personal quirk. The creation of an “anything goes” culture in some arenas has not established very good examples for the establishment of standards of behaviour. These have to be set against some external model. This is why I have argued for the left to begin work on creating an enforceable Code of Ethical Political Campaigning. Indeed, I believe no meaningful unity can ever exist while some carry out practices that others believe abusive. In itself, it would not abolish bad practices, especially if it is approached in a lip-service or box-ticking manner, but it would establish an outside standard to create ethical norms of behaviour that could be used to eradicate bad practices.

3. Finding the Most Suitable Organisational Expression of Politics. On no other issue does the left hold such absurd fetishes as on organisation. Yet, once the political purpose of an organisation is established a straight-forward pragmatic approach on the type of organisation required should establish itself. Countless variants of democratic centralism exist, some strange obsessions with decentralisation that would give no party a clear purpose as well as rights to factions, blocs and other entities that can disguise either the self-interest of organisations or one-man bands on the make.

Instead of obsessing over organisational, the correct approach would be to ask how the structure achieves the organisation’s socialist goal. Is the organisation’s behaviour healthy or unhealthy? To assess this, some questions have to be constantly assessed.

a. Is the organisation’s socialist goal clear to its members?
b. Does entity make firm, clear decisions?
c. Are they correctly implemented?
d. Are the links between overall goals and tactical responses clear?
e. Does a sufficiently discursive atmosphere exist where there are no “no-go” areas?
f. Are members constantly raising their individual understanding and consciousness?
g. Does a sufficiently reflective political practice exist that constantly assesses every policy, action and initiative?
h. Is business conducted honestly and in a comradely manner?
i. Is there any organisational impediment to achieving any of the above features?

Just as there is no magical key to the universe that opens all doors, there is no organisational structure that is more democratic or politically correct. But it is the achievement of these features that give an organisation its strength. No organisation that adjusts to the lowest common denominator will ever achieve its purpose. A socialist organisation must challenge its members and become a transformational experience in their lives. It is that transformation that attracts outsiders; it is always lost by those who hope that toning down the politics will attract others because this is a process of adjustment downwards. An interesting account of how a vibrant organisation works is given by Jim Kincaid on the International Socialist Network website. ( ) Put simply, an organisation is at its most democratic when these features are at their strongest. It is creating that culture that matters not any pre-set structure

Because I am not a supporter of the so-called “mass,” “socialist” party that wants to carve out an electoral niche somewhere in the cracks of the status quo, I find many aspects the authors’ approach severely faulty. But I recognise the pressing need to address the toxic reality that the socialist left has created. Recognising, albeit partially, the need to detoxify much of the socialist left is undoubtedly a step in advance of the self-delusion that has placed it at the service of others but made it unwilling to create its own independent socialist identity.